I posted this at our Progressive Bloggers site, but Susan Hu read it and encouraged me to post it here… so here goes:
I’ve been watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina’s horrific damage and I’ve been stunned by the magnitude of the destruction. The reporters who are at the scene in New Orleans and Biloxi and in Alabama are finding it hard to remain the “neutral observer” a reporter is supposed to be when covering a story. Something else has happenned as well – the normally docile mainstream media in the US has gotten a spine and is criticizing this administration at an unheard-of level.
I have seen scores of newpaper editorials slamming the Bush Administration for its slow response and its even slower attempts to get aid and help to the victims. Not just liberal papers like the NY Times, but conservative papers like the New Hampshire Union-Leader. I have seen anchor after anchor on CNN blast the absence of the National Guard, the Army, FEMA and so on.
I have just seen Anderson Cooper on CNN openly challenge Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, (a conservative Democrat) who was in the midst of handing out platitudes to President Bush and the Congress for reconvening, telling her that he’s sick and tired of politicians glad-handing other politicans when he’s seeing dead bodies lying in the streets for 4 days getting eaten by rats and no help in sight for survivors.
I am seeing people in New Orleans and Biloxi crying out “where is the Army, where is the National Guard?” The answer that doesnt need to be said because everyone knows it is that a lot of them arent around to help – they’re off in Iraq, along with a lot of equipment that could have been used to help save lives.
I have seen Republican House Leader Dennis Hastert get publicly skewered for suggesting that maybe New Orleans shouldnt be rebuilt and it might be a waste of funds to allocate money for it.
I’ve seen Jack Cafferty, a curmudgeonly rightwing-leaning commentator on CNN, say this:
The thing that’s most glaring in all of this is that the conditions continue to deteriorate for people who are victims and the efforts to do something about it don’t seem to be anywhere in sight. […]
The questions that we ask in The Situation Room every day are posted on the website two or three hours before we go on the air and people who read the website often begin to respond to the questions before the show actually starts. The question for this hour is whether the government is doing a good job in handling the situation.
I gotta tell you something, we got five or six hundred letters before the show actually went on the air, and no one – no one – is saying the government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far-reaching and calamatous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime. I’m 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as bungled and as poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can’t sandwiches be dropped to those people in the Superdome. What is going on? This is Thursday! This storm happened 5 days ago. This is a disgrace. And don’t think the world isn’t watching. This is the government that the taxpayers are paying for, and it’s fallen right flat on its face as far as I can see, in the way it’s handled this thing.
Cafferty then says, “you know, when they were removing Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube, Congress got back in session on a Sunday night to pass some sort of a resolution. Here, they might get back on Friday — the storm hit Monday. I guess it’s all what’s important to you…”
And even more remarkable.. the FoxNews reporters – some of the biggest apologists of Bush and the Administration anywhere – are also angrily asking where is the federal aid… where is the help for these people? Shep Smith is most notable among this group.. so much so he is taking grief from the wingnuts at FreeRepublic, upset that he’s making their hero Bush look inept by interviewing the desperate people, showing dead bodies and asking hard questions.
As an outside observer of your political process, I find it extremely ironic that it may not be the Iraq war or PlameGate that ends the Republicans dominance in the US government.. but Mother Nature.
People are angry and upset. They cant vote Bush out.. but they might remember what Party he belongs to in 2006 and 2008. That goes for people in the other Party who might be perceived as being too close to this Administration and supporting their incompetence (this means you, Senator Landrieu).